When dealing with any condition, it is of utmost importance that we make sure blood sugar regulation is optimal.

Most people respond with one of two questions:

“How do I know if I have blood sugar issues?”

or

“My doctor says that my blood sugar is normal.”

To answer the first question, keep reading for exact instructions!

But to answer the second question, I say: That’s not good enough knowing what we know now about science. A fasting glucose level does not reflect what happens after you eat, or what blood sugar and inflammation is like day-to-day and long-term.

If you have any of the following problems, blood sugar issues are probably involved.

It would benefit you to follow the instructions at the end of the article.

Overweight

Your waist if over 35” if you’re a female, or 40” if you’re a male.

You have one or more of the following positive lab tests:

Fasting blood sugar over 85

H1AC over 4.5

Fasting insulin over 3

Triglycerides over 80

HDL under 55

High blood pressure

You have chronic pain

You have an autoimmune condition

You have a chronic infection (like Epstein Barr or Lyme)

You have any hormonal problems, such as thyroid dysfunction, low testosterone, or estrogen imbalance.

You have fertility issues

You have polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).

If you have any of the above (or if you want to just see where you stand), here’s the complete list of tests you need to run.

I’ve listed the optimum values next to them. Keep in mind when you get lab tests back, they often have ranges that they say are “normal” next to them.

“Normal” to a lab means “not pathological”, or “not diseased.” This is not “optimal.” We want optimal lab tests for optimum function.

Fasting blood glucose-75-85

Fasting insulin-below 3

H1AC-below 4.5

Triglyceride-70-80

HDL-over 55

CRP or hs-CRP(tells about inflammation in your body)-under 1

Sed rate or ESR(non-specific test that also tells about inflammation)-under 6

You can retest the ones that come back abnormal every 1-3 months to see what kind of progress you are making.

There’s two ways to get these tests:

You can ask your doctor to write you a script. Make sure that if they do, they include ALL of the tests! Most doctors will only order a basic profile, or what the insurance pays for. This is not good enough if you want optimum health.

Call my office and we’ll be happy to write you a script for them. We even deal with a co-op lab call PCS that is about 5-10X cheaper than a “regular” lab (“regular” labs have a 500% mark up on average!) This is really important because then you can retest your labs every 1-3 months to see how you improve! Win!

After you get your lab tests back, what do you do about it? In a nutshell, here’s what you do:

Get your daily total carb intake below 70 – It might take a month or so to make this change, you can slowly ease in to it.

Eat 3 meals per day, no snacking. That being said, if you must snack, snack on fats like nuts and seeds.

Call our office to come in for a free nutrition class and free initial visit so that we can identify any food intolerances, immune challenges, nutritional deficiencies or organ dysfunctions that might be linked to your blood sugar and/or inflammation issues.

I hope this short article clears up exactly how to properly evaluate blood sugar disturbances and systemic inflammation. Like always, for more information, visit our website at SheehanNaturalHealth.com, look us up on Facebook, or check out our YouTube channel for additional tips on how to eat!

This time of year, lots of patients ask me, “What do I take when I’m sick?” Of course, the correct answer is “we test you, then tell you what your body wants, and you get better quickly.” However, when you’re getting sick, time is of the essence. When you first start to feel symptoms, the bacteria or virus making you sick is actually at a very low count. However, that viral/bacterial count tends to increase quickly exponentially, and by the time people get here to get tested, they’ve got a full-blown cold or flu. So this is what you take while you’re driving to the office to get properly tested.

These are supplements that everyone should have in abundance at home (have a big bottle of each), and take at the very first sign of illness. Do not wait until you are “sick”! Take them when you think “I wonder if I’m coming down with something?” By the time you think “I’m sick”, it’s too late, and it’s going to take time to get better. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure! A stitch in time saves nine! And so on…

As always, stop eating sugar! Sugar is known to weaken your immune system response 50-90% for 4-6 hours after you take it! Do not eat sugar or refined carbohydrates while you’re fighting a cold! For that matter, considering sugar and refined carbs suppress your immune system (whilst causing other problems!), why not cut it out altogether? And no, fruit is not a refined sugar as long as you don’t juice it, so you don’t have to avoid it (unless you’re on a very low carb diet for blood sugar/weight issues, which is a whole other topic altogether-see one of my many videos on carbs and diet).

Wash your hands with soap often. Viruses and bacteria, amongst other things, like to hang out on our hands. Wash them thoroughly and often to fight them effectively.

Get enough sleep. Lack of sleep raises stress hormones which suppresses your natural immune response, and makes your insulin less sensitive-a one two punch to get you sick a lot!

Drink enough water. This is just good old advice from Grandma (who lived to be 105 years old, so I listened when she talked!). I’m not sure why this works, other than thatit helps to detoxify your kidneys, which can’t be bad for your immune system.

Eat lots of veggies. Full of vitamins and minerals, veggies really support your immune system.

Work out regularly. Regular exercises boosts your immune function.

Congaplex. This is the most broad-based immune system support. It supports your body in fighting bacteria and viruses alike. Take 3 every half hour until you feel all better, then take 6/day for 2 weeks to rebuild your immune system. Don’t skip this step, or cut down Congaplex too quickly! My patients often tell me that they were started to feel better, cut down their Congaplex, and then got sick again! Don’t be that person!

Antronex. This doubles your liver’s filtration rate, so that your body rapidly cleans out the debris that you make when you kill off bacteria and viruses. It basically makes you feel better faster. Take 2 every half hour until you feel all better, then take 6/day for 2 weeks to rebuild your immune system, like Congaplex.

Now I know what you’re saying: “What about Echinacea, Andrographis, vitamin C, Zinc, Immuplex, etc.?” Hey, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with these supplements, and often these supplements kick butt! Often after examining a patient, I will recommend these rather than Congaplex and Antronex, but remember, I’m talking about what you can take while driving to my office. So keep a bottle of Congaplex and Antronex at home on the shelf, take them as I described above at the first sign of cold or flu, and in the meantime make an appointment to see your holistic doctor.

Both of these supplements are water soluble, so taking little bits every ½ hour is vastly more effective than taking handfuls of them infrequently. Keep a large bottle of each at home instead of waiting until you’re coming down with something to pick them up.

Do you ever notice how sometimes your chiropractic adjustments just don’t “hold” as well as other ones? You get adjusted, and feel better for a day, or a few hours, but the pain comes back? If this sounds like you, then listen up to the Top 10 Chiropractic Nutrition Commandments!

Don’t eat processed sugar! Everyone knows that sugar is bad for you (yes, even a little bit), but what most people don’t know is that sugar is terribly inflammatory, in other words, it will cause you not to hold your adjustments! Cut it out!

Cut way way back on all grains! Grains turn to sugar in your body very quickly, causing inflammation. Most people are slightly to severely sensitive to grains, meaning that they don’t process them well in their body, creating more inflammation. Grains also tend to aggravate autoimmune conditions. Lastly, grains turn to sugar so quickly in the body that they tend to feed the “bugs” in our body, such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites. Scientists are now finding out that chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and all autoimmune diseases are linked to a chronic infection in the body. Cutting out grains helps fight these infections.

Cut out (or way way down) on pasteurized dairy. Pasteurized dairy is very difficult for the body to process. Cutting way down on it helps with many problems, such as the inability to hold adjustments, asthma, skin conditions, allergies, and so on.

Drink enough water. People need between ½ gallon, and 1 gallon per day of water. If you have pain, and you drink less than ½ gallon per day, increasing it to ¾ gallon per day for 2 weeks usually helps immensely.

Lose the weight! Every 1 pound extra on the front of your body puts 10 pounds of pressure on your spine. This is especially true for your low back. Even 10 pounds weight loss makes a huge difference.

Get moving! Regular exercise cuts pain by up to 50%! And it doesn’t matter where you hurt, if you have shoulder or arm pain, walking or biking helps. Any exercise helps all body pain!

Do therapeutic exercises! If you have any question about what exercises you should be doing, you can watch them , or ask us when you come in for your next visit!

Get enough vitamin D. By now, everyone knows that they need to have enough vitamin D. Have your levels tested, and supplement as needed. Vitamin D, when deficient, will lower your absorption of calcium, making it impossible to hold your adjustment.

Get enough (good quality) calcium. Unlike vitamin D, blood tests do not show how much calcium is in your muscles, only your blood. There is a muscle reflex test that shows when you need more calcium in your tissues. We use Calcium Lactate with our patients (other calcium supplements don’t work nearly as well, and at the doses you need to take them, they can be dangerous!). Like I said in #8, low calcium in the muscles will make it impossible to hold an adjustment.

Get enough sleep. Lack of sleep makes everything worse. 95% of people need 7-9 hours per night for optimum health.

Previously, I wrote about how to help your sleep naturally. However, I forgot to include some easy, almost common sense cures! Here they are:

Cut your caffeine. It’s estimated that 50% of the population is sensitive to caffeine, often without knowing it. Try cutting caffeine (especially coffee) after 12pm. If you’re like me, and you love an afternoon cup of coffee, substitute green tea, or herbal tea (mint teas especially, since they are relaxing). Green tea has a small amount of caffeine, but doesn’t seem to affect sleep like coffee. If you think you’re extra sensitive to caffeine, try cutting it out altogether.

Cut down artificial light. Melatonin is the primary sleep hormone. Artificial light, especially blue light, disrupts its production in your brain. Computers, phones, iPads, Kindles, Nooks, and televisions are particularly bad. You can do two things about this: turn off those sources of artificial light when it gets dark or get blue light blocking glasses to wear once it gets dark outside. Uvex and Solar Shield are two popular, inexpensive brands. This really helps, plus you’ll look cool while wearing them!

Try eating more carbs at dinner. The pineal gland makes melatonin out of tryptophan. As a result, this gland controls the body’s circadian rhythm. Carbs increase tryptophan’s access to the pineal gland. I recommend eating carbs like fruit and root vegetables(such as sweet potatoes), not grains and processed sugars (both of which aggravate autoimmune conditions and other health concerns in the body). 30-40 grams of carbs should do it.

Keep your bedroom as dark as possible. Even small amounts of light disrupt sleep patterns and melatonin production. Try using black out shades.

Try to actively relax during the day. Stress hormones discourage sleep. Relaxation lowers overall stress hormone levels in the body. Just 15 minutes of yoga, meditation, deep breathing, or some other relaxation technique helps immensely. I like to practice deep breathing every afternoon for 15-20 minutes.

Get outside during peak sun hours, even in the winter! Natural light helps reset your circadian rhythm. Try and get outside every day.

Keep a to-do list. Write everything you have to do the next day in a journal, notepad or whatever. Writing it down helps to get it out of your head so that you can sleep better.

Keep a grateful log. Write down 3 things you are grateful for. I also find it helpful to write down the things I got to do that day that I enjoyed. Emphasizing the positive really helps change your mindset long-term.

Try these out. I confess I don’t do them all, just he ones that are easiest for me to do. You can do the same. Just keep trying each one on the list until you sleep like a baby. If you still have trouble, see the first article that I wrote on sleep.

I became 100% determined to beat Lyme disease, mostly by myself, with help from my teachers.

I promised myself that I would do whatever it takes to beat Lyme disease once and for all, even if it meant that I had to give up things, or change the way I lived.

I put myself in charge of eradicating this disease.

I took it as a personal mission to help as many people with Lyme disease as possible.

Basically, I totally confronted the problem. This I think is the most important step to fixing any problem. Once I made the above decisions, I realized “It must be hanging out in some weak area of my body”. I sat with this for a while and realized that I had had weaknesses in my lungs, kidneys, adrenal glands, liver, and gallbladder, and taken supplements for them. But the problem kept coming back. I also had swollen lymph nodes off and on since I was about 14, and even gotten surgery twice because of this situation.

The lymph system is a little hard to test, as it is literally everywhere, and can be a problem anywhere. So I went to the lymph nodes that regularly caused problems in my body, and guess what I found? Some sort of bacterial challenge, and it was bad (in Nutrition Response Testing, we keep away from “diagnosing” anything to keep the FDA off our back, but we can say that we have an immune system challenge)! I had hit paydirt!

Next, using Nutrition Response Testing Acute Dosing Protocol, I found which supplements would support the organ (the lymph nodes) and immune system challenge (bacterial) that came up. I took the dosage I found, but instead of taking it daily, I took it hourly! As my brilliant wife had pointed out, I had an acute exacerbation of a long term problem, that needed help right now! The results were undeniable: the cough that I had immediately stopped, and the open wound I had in one of the infected lymph nodes for 6 months healed in two days. It was a miracle. I kept this protocol up until I felt 100% better, then I gradually cut down the supplements as my body indicated with muscle testing.

So what did I learn from this?

If it looks like Lyme and acts like Lyme, it’s probably Lyme!

You’ve got to use Nutrition Response Testing locate the immune system weakness exactly.

You’ve got to use Nutrition Response Testing to test exactly what you need to support the weakness.

You’ve got to follow through 100% on your supplement program. This may take time.

I had to totally stop eating refined sugar, grains, and pasteurized dairy.

I had to adhere to a diet of fruits, veggies, meats, nuts and oils in order to rebuild my immune system.

I had to handle the different stresses in my life to take the pressure off of my immune system.

Sometimes I had to take wayyyyyyyy more of the supplements I tested for than what is generally suggested. Basically, I had to go with what my body said to do, instead of what someone else who wasn’t in my body said.

I had to trust that my body knew what it wanted, and if I wasn’t feeling better, I just hadn’t found the problem yet.

Lyme disease is definitely curable.

I hope this 4 part series into my own personal health challenge helps you with your own health challenge. Keep tuned each week for more advice on how you can help yourself live a happier, healthier life!